Yes, plenty of other people perform indiscriminate attacks upon civilians, and many states, including in the west use arbitrary violence against other civilians or even their own. I’m sure people are aware that they are terrorists outside of Hamas.
You are right, plenty of people use the label to further their own goals and the ‘terrorist’ label is mostly used if not misused to discredit groups of people or political movements. Since it doesn’t really seem like the term is going to go anywhere soon, I think it is important to give a precise meaning to the term for this very reason.
Do we really need to mention every single act of terror committed by the Hamas or otherwise since the dawn of time? This is just shitty rhetoric, the same kind that Zionists use all the time.
But you do make some good points. Although I understand why you might have thought otherwise, I do think that Hamas needs to be portrayed fairly which indeed we haven’t done so far. Leaving it that way doesn’t do Palestinians, which overall greatly require our support and help, any good.
So for anyone else who would, per chance, stumble upon here, I’d like humbly submit my own personal presentation of Hamas, not-so-highly condensed for your own benefit:
The Hamas is a Palestinian political organization of Muslim-Brotherhood-inspired Islamic ideology. It was created in the Gaza strip in the late eighties during the first Intifada, a popular uprising against the Israeli occupation of their ancestral lands and the oppression the Palestinians have been facing ever since. Led by a physically disabled scholar, which up to this point had spend most of his time managing charities to help the dispossessed, the resistance movement created an armed wing to fight the State of Israel. Everyone knows of course, that the dismantling of the Zionist State was inscribed as a goal of Hamas in their first charter, but a less-well known fact is that, at the time, it was the official stance, and seemingly the majority view inside the movement, that civilians were not legitimate targets. (This didn’t stop civilian deaths during operations, people can argue if it was a bug or a feature but let’s move along).
This stance officially changed in the nineties, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli civilian settler, opened fire inside a Hebron mosque, killing 29 people and injuring many more. In response to this, and also against the Oslo peace deal (to be fair it was a shitty deal for Palestinians), they started launching suicide bombings, largely targeting places where civilians gather like busses or busy streets, and this for many years. Along with plenty of other possibly more important reasons, like continued settlement expansion inside Palestinian territories, this culminated in the failure of the Oslo deals and the second Intifada, during which plenty of other legitimate or terror attacks where committed and directed by Hamas members (amongst many other acts of violence committed by Israel, Israeli settlers, or other Palestinian groups or individuals)
It took some time and a great deal of oppression but Israel succeeded in crushing the uprising but still withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005, handing over control to the Palestinian Authority. Although I focused a lot on the armed conflict on the sole account that it is more eventful, it should be stressed that Hamas has continued to have large non-combating components, notably running charities filling the vacuum left by lack of proper state amenities and social services thus providing support to a significant part of the Palestinian population. They ended up coming first in elections in 2006, running on a platform against the rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority controlled by the PLO. This caused Israeli and international outrage, things went sour. Hamas took control of the Gaza strip after some fighting against the PLO which they have administered ever since.
Hamas being largely considered at this point by the Israelis as a mortal enemy of Israel and of the Jewish people, Israel blockaded the Gaza strip in return. This didn’t stop sporadic acts of violence, like rockets fired at cities (although a lot if not most were fired by other militant groups) or operations against military targets, to which Israel responded with massive campaigns of destruction with immense death tolls. However, large periods of relative calm also occurred. During this period the Hamas made gestures of some significance towards Israel or peaceful resolution, like unilaterally declaring a long-term truce, attempting to prevent other groups to launch attacks, or stating rather clearly that they were ready to negotiate a long-term settlement with the Israeli State of the basis of the 1967 borders.
It could be quite easily argued that between 2005 and October 7, actual terror acts committed by Hamas were, relatively speaking and of course ignoring the suffering of their victims, quite insignificant compared to its history before 2005 or to its political power in the Gaza Strip or its large spread in Palestinian society. But it should not be ignored that by that point, the Israeli security apparatus, the Gaza blockade and the construction of the West-Bank wall had also made operations a lot more complicated to carry out. It should also be mentioned that Hamas has at times shown itself to be a force of oppression against the Palestinian people.
It seems rather well-established that the October 7 attack were planned to target civilians besides legitimate military targets.
It is important to stress that I focused here solely on Hamas, leaving out the greater context for the sake of brevity. Hamas has never existed or operated in a vacuum. Hamas is a late actor in a conflict that finds its roots over about 150 years ago when a bunch of Europeans Jews, in the face of rising antisemitism and partly inspired by other European nationalist and proto-fascist movements, decided it was a good idea to settle the land of Palestine to create a Jewish state, no matter if the people living there felt otherwise.
Anybody hell-bent of laying the blame on someone or a group needs to come to terms with the fact those truly responsible for the tragic mess that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and who are not all Jewish, Israeli, or even Palestinian, have all been dead for quite some time. Amongst the many of those who have decided since then to contribute to the problem rather than solve it, special mention should be made of Benjamin Netanyahu, a major player in Israeli politics for over thirty years, seventeen of which he was prime minister, and who largely contributed to the climate of hate inside Israeli society and, ultimately, the ongoing genocide. Speaking of which, intentions of genocide, or at the very least ethnic cleansing if you will, were quite clearly expressed by some of the most notable early Zionist leaders, and the Israeli settler movement has actively pursued this goal for decades.
I’m not going to contribute further to the discussion but please feel free to reply.
Sorry for the misunderstanding but I’m actually not the one taking issue with people supporting Hamas. I’m taking issue with one guy taking issue with another, the latter, while seemingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, expressing his belief that Hamas doesn’t deserve support on account of their terrorist actions (amongst other things IIRC) and the former yelling that he can’t say that because that’s what Israeli propaganda says.
My point is one, that terrorism is a valid red-line for a stranger on the internet to express, although I don’t take offense at people constructively debating that, and two, that reminding that Hamas has resorted to terror is a valid take, notwithstanding whatever Israeli propaganda uses to push their narrative.